I have been adding some figures to my unit of Nyland dragoons, to get them up to 9 figures, which will be rebased to a new and more standard format. When doing so I also added a standard. Some literature, Törnquist in particular, claims that the regiment did not carry standards. Illustrations made ca 1804 by Adelborg, who served in the regiment himself, show that this is wrong. However, I dont know exactly what the standard or flag looked like. It may have been a typical dragoon flag (dragonfana, with split tails) or a standard square cavalry guidon. There is a preserved dragonfana for the Karelian dragoons (in the Armémuseum in Stockholm), but it dates to the 1740s and it does not seem to have been used by the regiment – presumably that is why it has been preserved. In any case, the motif is very likely to have been the Nyland coat of arms over a red background on one side and a royal monogramme on the other.
My standard is very much oversized, but so are all my flags! As you have probably already spotted, I missed trimming the fringes around the flag pole. I dont do many cavalry standards, so it was a rookie mistake. And it is unfortunately difficult to do anything about it now… And looking at some actual preserved Swedish dragoon flags, it does seem that the fringes did indeed run all the way around the pole! So maybe it wasnt so much of a mistake after all. And regarding the size: there are certainly 18th century dragoon flags in the Armémuseum collections that are fairly large. I found one example which is no less than 120×140 cm (not sure if that includes or excludes the fringes?). On the other hand, there is the image below, which show a very small standard, guidon or whatever it is should called.
The figures are of course by Perry miniatures. The standard bearer is a simple conversion of the NCO figure (the Perrys dont include a standard bearer in their packs).
Pancratist 